DIYers IT Zone

Install hard disk is very simple. There are few steps you need to take depending on whether is single drive, or additional drive sharing same IDE cable.

Setting Jumpers
The first thing you need to do before installing a hard drive is to decide whether you want it to be a primary or secondary, master or slave, based on the other IDE devices that are or will be installed in the machine. Then, make sure the jumpers are set correctly for master, slave, or cable select. This is based on your IDE cable also.

For example, if the hardisk is connected to Master of IDE cable, then u can set your hardisk jumper to Single/Master. If your add on hard disk connected to slave of IDE cable, then u can set the jumper to slave.

* Jumper settings for different brand of hard disk is vary.

Cable Select is a setting that allows the slave or master condition to be determined by which connector on the ribbon cable the EIDE device is connected to. The cable and motherboard or IDE controller must support cable select in order to use it. Cables that do support cable select have three different colored connectors: black at one end for master, gray in the middle for slave, and blue at the other end for the motherboard. Other cables with three connectors might support cable select. If you have two EIDE devices on one channel (primary or secondary), both or neither must be set to cable select. That is, you can’t mix cable select and master or slave jumper settings on the same channel. Jumper settings are usually displayed on the drive label. If not, go to the drive manufacturer’s Web site.

Above rules apply to optical drive also, such as combo drive, DVDRW, CDRW and etc. For example, when u want to connected a DVD-RW and a CD-RW using same IDE cable, we can set Master for DVD-RW while Slave for CD-RW.